Blessed are the peacemakers

The problem with this beatitude is that we sometimes think peacemaking is about making things look good -- plastering over cracks and avoiding conflict. Instead of peacemaking, this is called peace-faking. How can you tell the difference between a peacemaker and a peace-faker? In Jesus' words, "by their fruits ye shall know them." For peace-fakers, truth is just delicate embroidery on the outer edge of daily life. Rather than exposing mistakes, peace-fakers conceal them. They pacify where they should challenge. They forgive cowardice which shrinks from exposing evil and condone ignorance which refuses to acknowledge mistakes. By comparison, peacemakers have a calculated recklessness in their commitment to truth. They kiss the cross of confrontation with evil, unavoidable suffering, and ultimate victory.

It's common to think of peacemakers as mediators who bring reconciliation between persons and groups. But this is only the beginning. The vexing conflicts that perplex our day; the rankling strife that sets man so far apart; the monumental problems broadcast on the news can all be resolved in a peaceful heart. A peacemaker might put it this way:

"The mighty drama we see acted here, with crime and greed and nations much afraid, is but a shifting background atmosphere in which the plot of human life is played. A simple role is ours on this vast stage. Our lines are few; our cue is from above. But all our deeds climactically presage the grand conclusion of triumphant love. Our part well-played, the ages will applaud, and peacemakers be called the sons of God."

Can joy exist without conditions?

Here are excerpts from a book called Against the Pollution of the I by French author Jacques Lusseryan. Blinded in childhood, Jacques was a teenager when Germany invaded France in 1940. He formed a resistance group called "Volunteers of Liberty," and at 19 was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where 56,000 prisoners lost their lives. Here he met a fellow prisoner named Jeremy. Jacques remembers Jeremy in these words.

"The horrors of Buchenwald were real, but Jeremy did not speak of them. His gaze was not nailed to the smoke from the crematorium, nor on the 1,200 prisoners in Block 57. He seemed to look through all this. He knew we could not live on the beliefs we had of Buchenwald. He said many of us would die from them, and he was right. I knew many men who were not killed, but died anyway because they thought they were in hell. It was of such matters that Jeremy spoke.

Newly-arrived Buchenwald prisoners.

"Jeremy belonged to the Christian Science faith. He did not try to console us. He spoke hard, but always gently. His eyes were solidly fixed on our miseries and he never blinked. He was not afraid, just as naturally as we were afraid.

"'For one who knows how to see, things are just as they always are,' he said. Buchenwald like ordinary life? I could not accept this until Jeremy enabled me to see. One day I realized Jeremy had lent me his eyes. With his eyes I saw Buchenwald was not in Germany, as we thought. Instead, it was in each of us -- baked and rebaked; tended incessantly, nurtured in a horrible way. And we could vanquish it if we really wanted to. The Nazis had given us a terrible microscope, a 'concentration' camp, but this was no reason to stop living or loving.

"Jeremy found joy in Block 57. When he was present, we found joy rising in us! It was like a pardon, a reprieve -- the discovery that JOY EXISTS WITHOUT CONDITIONS, AND WHICH NO CONDITION CAN KILL. I have the clearest memory of finding this joy. I perceived one day a little place where I did not shiver; where I had no shame; where the death-dealers were only phantoms. I owed this to Jeremy.

"He wore a registration number. Others beside myself knew him. But Jeremy was not there in the exclusive manner in which we hear the phrase "to have been at Buchenwald." Jeremy was not happy. He was joyous. This is the mystery and power of beings who worship a God other than their own personalities."

God is love: the sequel

A friend of mine worked as a Christian Science practitioner -- a person who helps others solve problems through prayer.  He was called one night by a neighbor whose wife was in the hospital. The neighbor asked if my friend could give his wife "last rights." My friend said he was not a priest. So the neighbor asked, "well, could you at least go and talk to her? She hasn't been to any church since she was a child. Growing up, she went to the Christian Science Sunday School. So my friend agreed to visit her at the ICU.

When he arrived, he peeked through the door and saw her on a bed. She had IV's dripping into her arms, and lights were blinking in machinery around her. She looked pale and gray, and was not expected to live. He walked up to her bed and introduced himself, thinking he'd say something wonderful that would lift her spirits and restore her faith. But no ideas came to him. He drew a total blank. After a few minutes of silence, he said, "If you could remember just one idea you learned in Sunday School, it would be enough to heal you." Then he walked out, feeling terrible that he'd been so abrupt. He was sure he'd failed to help her.

A week later, my friend's wife asked if he ever went to see their neighbor in the hospital. He said yes, but didn't explain how useless he'd been. "Well, I saw her shopping at the supermarket today, and she looks great!" said his wife.

My friend was astonished! He quickly called the neighbor's home and the wife answered. He asked her what happened. She said, "well, after you left, I really tried to remember any idea I learned in Sunday School. I haven't been to church for 50 years, but believe it or not, I could actually "see" the building in my memory. Then I recalled how the Sunday School looked. I could see the tables and chairs. It had been such a long time! As I looked up on the wall behind the superintendent's desk, I saw the words GOD IS LOVE. They were on a plaque hanging on the wall, but now they looked different to me. The letters were burning on the wall. I could read the words and see the flames coming from each letter. It was amazing! I just kept looking at those words, and then I noticed a feeling of warmth in my body. It began at my head and moved all the way to my toes.  The next time my nurse checked on me, she said I'd taken a turn for the better.  The doctor said if I kept improving, I could go home soon, and here I am, feeling perfect. So I guess you were right!"

God is love

Do we always remember that God is love? Little Bobby Clark remembered, and the idea influenced his life.

Born in New Castle, IN in 1928, he attended a Christian Science Sunday School in Indianapolis as a lad. He was impressed by a large plaque hanging on the wall behind the superintendent's desk. It said GOD IS LOVE. The idea stuck in his mind after he moved to New York City in 1954, changed his name to Robert Indiana, and  eventually became a famous artist.

Inspired by poets like Gertrude Stein, he was deeply interested in the written word. His composition of LOVE is innovative in the way it dissolves divisions between seeing and reading. He described the character of this work as "verbal-visual."

LOVE is a sophisticated abstract composition, but also a one-word poem. He arranged the word with stacked letters touching each other to suggest intimacy. He created many variations, including a design for a Christmas card, and another for a U.S. postage stamp. Perhaps you recall buying 8-cent "love stamps" in 1973?

Many assume the original work was a protest to the Vietnam War, but Indiana has said often that he got the idea from the motto he learned as a child in Sunday School.

(Tomorrow: How the words GOD IS LOVE on a Sunday School wall healed a woman in the hospital.)

Remember how good you have it

When Mount St. Joseph University opens it's women's basketball season next month, the opening game will be unforgettable, no matter who wins. For one incoming freshman from Lawrenceburg, IN, taking the floor will fulfill the dream of a lifetime, if she lives that long.

When she was 18 and a senior at Lawrenceburg High, Lauren Hill learned she had an inoperable brain tumor. Doctors gave her two years to live, at the most. Her parents were crushed by the news, but Lauren only wanted to know one thing, "Can I still play basketball?"

On Oct. 1, her 19th birthday, Lauren's Mount St. Joseph teammates gave her a surprise party after practice. She told her coach she wanted to play at least one college game. "She's so strong," said Coach Dan Benjamin. "She's dealing with death and thinking about everyone else instead. Her family and her team come first."

The game was scheduled for Nov. 15, but the NCAA made an exception, and  the game was moved from opponent Hiram College to Nov. 1 at the Xavier Cintas Center. "These games usually attract about 50 fans," said Coach Benjamin. But the Center has 10,000 seats, and was sold out in less than two hours.

"What keeps me going in remembering why I"m here," says Lauren. "One January night I was having a meltdown. I asked God what he sent me here for. I said, 'Whatever you sent me here for, I'm ready to do.'"

Lauren is dignified, poised and composed. Like many facing death, she's impossibly wise. She owns an inner peace.What she's here for is to remind us how good we have it, and that we need to make that goodness matter, not for us, but for everyone, and not tomorrow, but today.

A ghost story for Halloween

Many years ago a friend shared this true story. His daughter, only about six, refused to sleep in her bedroom with the door closed. He and his wife assumed she was afraid of the dark, but she said she wasn't. Then why must her door remain open all night, letting in light from the hall? She explained there was a scary ghost in her room that only appeared after the door was shut. Seeing it frightened her, but it never appeared if her door was open.

Her Dad assured her ghosts are unreal, so they can't hurt anyone. She could stop worrying and relax and go to sleep. But his explanation didn't help. As soon as he left the room and shut the door, she saw the ghost again and called for help.

Finally he came back and asked her exactly where the ghost was in her room. She told him to come inside and shut the door, and she'd show him. After the door was closed, she pointed to a spot near the corner and said "I see the ghost right over there." So her Dad walked over and stood exactly where she saw the ghost. That ended her fear! All night she slept peacefully with the door shut.

The next morning she told her Mom why she wasn't afraid anymore. "When I saw Dad standing where the ghost seemed to be, I knew Dad was real, so the ghost couldn't be."

If a scary ghost of sorrow or worry or loneliness keeps us awake at night, let's tell our Father about it. If we wait, never doubting, we'll soon see His presence exactly where the ghost appears. And we'll know that because He's real, the ghost can't be.   Happy Halloween!

Saying "no" to fear

President Obama met recently in the White House Oval Office with Nina Pham of Dallas. Nina was the first nurse in the United States diagnosed with the Ebola virus. After the meeting, the President urged Americans to base their response to domestic Ebola cases "on facts, not fear."

This advice is not new. It echoes from the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918-1920, which killed 75 million people, including 675,000 Americans.

During that pandemic, U.S. Navy doctors tried to find the cause of the disease. Fifty young sailors stationed on Goat Island, CA, volunteered to be flu victims. They did not fear the flu, and wanted to help. They were placed with flu patients; asked to sniff from jars filled with flu germs; and had the germs injected into their bloodstreams. But none of the sailors developed flu symptoms.

According to a 1918 issue of the Oakland (California) Enquirer, "Medical men are now the first to tell patients to eliminate fear. There would be no cases of influenza in California if every person in the state would do as these Goat Island sailors did -- eliminate fear of the disease."

In the words of poet Edgar Guest: The great god Fear grinned back at me: "I am the foe men never see, the hurt they never feel," said he. "I have no voice and yet I speak; no strength and yet I blanch the cheek and leave the strongest mortals weak. I fire no gun. I make no cry, no lodging place have I, yet I'm the countless deaths men die. I am man's cruelest, bitterest foe, yet past his door I could not go, had he the wit to tell me, 'No!'"